The Drug War increases drug misuse by children by, 1) keeping the subject of "drugs" forever on the mind of rebellious youth (see "Synthetic Panics" for how this is accomplished), and 2) encouraging them to fear and despise substances rather than to understand them. (It often accomplishes this here in the States by having the state police or the DARE organization bribe the kids with teddy bears to adopt a jaundiced Christian Science view of psychoactive medicines.) That's why "crack cocaine" is a byword for "hopelessly addictive substance" in the west, even though that form of coke can be used non-addictively by a person who has been taught to do so. In a recent documentary ("Kid 90") about the '80s child star Soleil Moon Frye (AKA "Punky Brewster" of sitcom fame), one of her friends describes how he used a variety of illegal substances, including crack cocaine, "acid," and heroin (which he says he smoked). "But," he said, "I always did this little thing where I'd do it and then not do it for a long time, where I wouldn't get so super strung out or anything."
Sounds like he saw through drug-war lies, right? He realized that informed use was the answer rather than substance demonization. But not so, for he then adds, apparently in deference to drug-warrior sensibilities: "Which isn't any excuse, but..."
Really? Why not?
A second friend then proceeds to blast "drugs" by implicitly blaming them for the deaths of his friends in the '90s, despite the fact that those deaths were a result of prohibition combined with the drug-war policy of willful ignorance about psychoactive substances. But Soleil's only comment about "drugs" in this documentary was in reference to an ecstatic experience that she had with her friends in a sunny wheat field after consuming a few mushrooms. "I have such a soft spot in my heart for mushrooms," she says, "I must tell you, because of that experience."
Indeed, the experience was so positive that she violates drug-war etiquette by failing to follow up this statement with the customary post-facto denunciation of her youthful "drug use," thereby failing to emulate the seemingly endless list of two-faced British politicians who profess their scorn for the cocaine that they used so liberally in their youth.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.
Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks: J'excuse! People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took your prohibition to accomplish that! Stop arresting, start teaching safe use!
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.
NOW is the time for entheogens -- not (as Strassman and Pollan seem to think) at some future date when materialists have finally wrapped their minds around the potential usefulness of drugs that experientially teach compassion.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.